Features

Safety first

28 Aug 2014 by GrahamSmith

There’s a lot more to being a flight attendant than serving drinks, as Jenny Southan discovers on a British Airways cabin crew training day


If you are reading this in the lounge before getting on a flight, or sitting on board waiting for take-off, don’t be alarmed.

What you are about to read describes a simulation – and, trust me, you are in very capable hands with the cabin crew assigned to look after you. They are trained to deal with more than you might think...

It’s a familiar situation – I have entered the cabin of a British Airways B737-400, taken my seat and strapped myself in. There is a safety demonstration, and soon the sound of the engines can be heard firing up, and rumbling as the plane starts taxiing. We are instructed to make sure our phones are switched off and, although I am aware that something is going to happen, I have no idea what it is.

The cabin lights are dimmed and the crew take their seats. The captain informs us we are ready for take-off and, a minute or two later, the plane tilts upwards, I am pressed back into my seat with the force and we are in the air. Once cruising, the cabin lights come back on and everyone relaxes.

Suddenly, we hear: “This is your captain speaking – this is an emergency.” We are plunged into darkness, the plane begins to judder and the cabin starts to fill with smoke. The crew spring into action – shouting at the top of their voices: “Brace! Brace!” I bend forward with my hands behind my head and don’t dare to look up as the crew continue to shout – first from the front of the plane and then the back, alternating repeatedly – “Brace! Brace!” until we have landed.

Before I know it, the crew are commanding: “Unfasten your seatbelts and come this way.” I follow their voices up ahead and when I get to the front, they yell: “Jump! Jump!” and we each leap through the open door.

Luckily, we only land on an elevated walkway in the giant warehouse at BA’s Heathrow Cranebank training facility. Moments later, the crew, now wearing fluorescent vests and carrying torches and megaphones, do a head count to confirm everyone has got out. We laugh with relief – but for a few minutes it felt real.

Along with several other journalists, I’m here to get a taste of what it’s like to undergo BA’s six-week “new entrant” crew training course.

Notebooks in hand, we go back on to the plane so executive trainers James Austin and Caroline Black can talk us through what happened during the drill, and the standard procedures they have to follow before every flight – from checking boarding cards to securing the cabin for take-off.

They explain that as we had experienced an unplanned emergency scenario, there had been no time to tell people to put their tray tables or seats up. They also asked us to demonstrate the brace position we had instinctively adopted, and went around correcting us.

“Don’t put your elbows on your knees or interlink your fingers as they could break on impact. Put your hands on the back of your head, not between your forehead and the seat in front.”

What I found surprising was how, in high-stress situations, it is your hearing that tends to be the first sense to go. I didn’t even remember the alarm sounding, which is why the crew repeatedly shout commands. “We make sure we are loud, calm and clear,” Black says. “We have to be assertive.”

Making sure everyone has managed to undo their seatbelt is another issue – some people revert to the familiar habit of releasing a car seatbelt by pressing a button at their side, forgetting with the shock that aircraft ones have lap buckles.

Next, we learn how to release the doors. Normally you have to conduct a “cross check”, whereby crew confirm for each other that they have put the doors into “manual” mode – open it in “automatic”, and the escape slide will self-inflate. (This could be deadly for ground staff if you have just pulled up at the stand.)

However, we are in an emergency situation so automatic is what we want.

“Don’t evacuate straight away,” Black directs. “Look out of the window and assess what’s happening outside first as there could be more hazards.” We each have a go at flinging the door open, waiting six to ten seconds until the (imaginary) slide has inflated and shouting our instructions as loudly as we can.

“This is an emergency – evacuate, evacuate!”

As one’s imagination is only good to a point, it’s not long before we are donning red boiler suits and cotton overshoes to tackle real slides first-hand. If I had been ten years old I probably would have been extremely excited, but this was daunting.

We ascend a flight of steps to the height at which it would be level with the exit of a B747. To begin with, we can do the “sit and slide”, but then we have to step off. One person refuses to do it. I ask what happens in an emergency if someone is too scared. “We push them,” Austin says. I jump.

British Airways has more than 15,000 cabin crew working across its fleet of aircraft, and each of them has not only passed the six-week basic training programme but also regular refresher courses.

Areas covered include SEP (safety and equipment procedures) and AvMed (aviation medicine), as well as hijackings, dangerous goods, violent passengers, fires and smoke, and landing on water (ditching), the training for which involves splashing around in a swimming pool and clambering into rafts. If you are a weak swimmer or don’t have the strength to pull yourself aboard, you won’t graduate.

Black says: “The first five days are about the drills, then we move on to the specifics of each aircraft type, security and first aid. We do three days on delivering babies, how to use defibrillators, mouth-to-mouth resuscitation – it’s quite intense.”

Last year BA had 14,000 applicants for 800 jobs, at a starting salary of £21,000. Austin says: “It’s really hard to get through the initial interviews, so once they get to training we are there to support them and get them through it.”

If you saw the BBC documentary A Very British Airline, which was broadcast in June, you’ll also know that the constant evaluation and “snapshot” system of “three strikes and you’re out” adds even more pressure. “We are their mum, dad, counsellor and best friend in the first weeks,” Black says. “It can be emotional.”

Former trainee (now crew) Alice Kennedy, who appeared on the programme, told Business Traveller it was “one of the hardest things, professionally, I have done”.

She added: “The most surprising part for me was probably how real the cabin mock-ups were – in particular, the hijacking scenario. I couldn’t believe how real it felt at the time. I found myself sat there absolutely terrified. But you need to be completely prepared for any scenario.”

A team of about 50 executives and 70 line trainers puts approximately 20,000 people a year through 1,000 courses, including conversions for those set to fly new aircraft such as the A380 and B787.

Black says: “For the new entrants, we tell them: ‘This is your last flight as a passenger. Even if you go on holiday, you will still be crew. How many of you have ever checked under your seat to make sure your life jacket is there? I guarantee you will after this.’”

We finish our morning of training in the “fireground”. You might think a fire breaking out on board would be the most dangerous thing, but smoke, in fact, could be worse.

We enter a large steel cabin outside the hangar where there is a double row of economy seats. White smoke (dry ice) starts pouring in from the sides, and then the lights go out.

“The more you move, the lower the smoke gets, making it harder to tell where it’s coming from,” Austin says. “You need to keep your head down, cover your mouth and crawl on your knees to get out.”

Back in the fresh air, we relocate to a meeting room to practise putting on a smoke hood – a rubber gas mask attached to a silver sack that goes over your head. BA has strict rules about beards and hairstyles for this reason – the hood needs to fit tightly with no gaps.

It will take a member of crew about a minute to put on so the risk has to be immediately assessed – if you can deal with the cause of the smoke and the pilot can turn up the air conditioning to get rid of it, this might be a better use of time. The fun part is being the firefighter – out in the yard, we all take turns blasting a burning oven with an extinguisher.

In the afternoon, we change into our very own British Airways uniforms for a photo shoot. We have a go at performing a safety demonstration with all the necessary props, then learn about serving customers in premium cabins – how to talk them through menus, speak eloquently about grape varieties, vintages and wine-producing regions, and serve drinks.

Still, if the day has taught me anything, it is that while crew may be concerned about your comfort, they are primarily interested in your safety.

Becky Wadsworth has been serving with BA for 20 years. She says: “It can be challenging when you are dealing with people who are at the top of their game and are used to being in control, and then they get on an aircraft and they lose a degree of that control. It’s very important how you manage them.

“As crew, I think you need a genuine desire to help people, patience, the ability to stay calm under pressure and be a team player.”

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